Hey, Everyone!

It's been a while since our last backer update, so this is a big one! If you haven't checked out the Prismata alpha in the last month or so, there are a huge number of changes. Let's start with the biggest: our new interface, now available at play.prismata.net!

Prismata's new user interface is now available!

New Units and Balance Updates

We just deployed our biggest balance patch ever, with over a dozen units receiving changes. The full list of adjustments is posted on the Prismata blog, alongside explanations for each change.

If you haven't played in a while, here are some of the latest units that have been added (more coming every month):

Our partnership with Humble Bundle is live!

The folks at Humble Bundle have graciously offered to sponsor Prismata by hosting our crowdfunding rewards (keys, art books, soundtrack, etc.) on their site. To start, we have now madebacker badges available through Humble's system. To get your Prismata backer badge, simply go here and enter the email address that you used to back us on Kickstarter (or, if you used paypal, your paypal email). You'll then receive an email containing a download page for all Prismata rewards that are currently available (along with any other orders you may have made on Humble Bundle).

If you encounter any problems with the key resender, you can also log into Humble's Prismata page manually. See these instructions (shouts to Prismata player BlaqkAngel for providing them!)

The badge codes can be redeemed in the Prismata software itself to unlock the backer badges. If you have any issues logging into Humble or redeeming your codes, please let us know!

Arena Mode

A simplified version of arena mode, with no rewards, is currently live on the server.

The next step is to enable skins, emotes, and gold/platinum arena tickets as arena rewards. We're taking some extra time to refine the reward systems to make sure we're confident that our collectibles have the right "feel", but we're getting close!

Skins like this Chibi Shiver Yeti will be available soon as arena rewards.

AI Feedback Survey

Our AI Mastermind Dave has created a bot feedback survey. If you've played a few games against our Prismata bots and want to let him know what you think of them, we'd really appreciate your feedback!

What's next?

Once rewards are in and working well, we'll enable the payment system so that you'll be able to use in-game currency to help obtain rare skins and custom emotes. There will be a test period before real-money purchases are permitted.

We're developing a fully interactive, well-thought-out tutorial experience for new players. Building a good tutorial is extremely important (and difficult!), but we hope to have something worth showing soon!

We'll be adding many new features aimed at newer players, including Casual Match, more bot personalities, and a progression system in which you'll “level up” and unlock more units and in-game features as you play for the first few hours.

We’re still working on many art improvements, plus improvements to Prismata's efficiency and stability. We're also prepping our server so it's ready for thousands of simultaneous users!

Another new skin: Ninja Wild Drone!

And then…?

Once we’re in a good position with our new player experience and our progression systems working well, it will be time for a party, right? Well yeah, pretty much.

We’ll be gearing up for a big event later this year. We’ll be making a new trailer, doing a press release, buying ads, and getting a boatload of new players into Prismata. We also hope to announce a Grand Prix circuit that will feed into a Prismata Alpha World Championship event toward the end of 2015.

Meanwhile, the Campaign is still on the horizon. As for Raids, we're considering trying out a super-experimental prototype sometime later this year. No promises, though!

Last new skin preview for today! Wild West Steelsplitter.

What about Steam?

I honestly have *no idea* when we should put Prismata on Steam. I’ve talked to some developers who have had great success with Steam Early Access and actually earned enough funds from it to allow them to hire more developers! I’ve also seen many examples of games that I feel should have waited until their product was more polished.

What do you guys think?

That's all for now!

I look forward to seeing you enjoying arena mode, the new UI, and the new/rebalanced units on the Prismata alpha server!